Cameroon

Support to the implementation of the Rural Sector Development Strategy (ProPFE) – intervention lines: Forest and Environment

Germany is a major supporter to Cameroon's National Forest Programme (Programme sectoriel forêt et environnement – PSFE), which started in 2006. The programme's overall targets include conservation and valuation of the national forest and wildlife resources. To secure the economic, ecological and social functions of Cameroon's forest eco-systems in the long term, various stakeholder groups receive support in sustainable resources management.

One part of the German contribution is currently geared towards establishing a basket funding approach (Fonds Commun) for advisory services and investments by Germany and fellow donors in the area.

A forest policy advice component works at improving the legal and institutional regulatory prerequisites in support of the Voluntary Partnership Agreement on behalf of the EU-FLEGT process. A revision the Forest Law, a more institutionalised use of modern forest management plans, and an extension of IT databases contribute to outscaling sustainable forest management best practices and provide the basis for timber tracking.

To improve the management of public finance in the forest and environment sectors the instruments and processes applied as yet are being harmonized. The establishment and dispersal of public budgets are trained, as well as a more self-reliant use of sectoral programme budgets.

A third component endorses the promising approach of both conserving and valuating the forest through demarcation of council forests (forêts communales). This component accompanies the "Centre Technique de Foresterie Communale" in its mission to assist communes in the sustainable management of their forests.

By way of a national climate policy Cameroon tries to tie up its wealth of natural resources with international REDD processes (e.g. pilot measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, feeding their experience and lessons learnt back into the policy; adoption to climate change measures). The programme provides support to establishing the necessary institutional framework, with the aim of capacity building, improved process co-ordination, proliferating best practice and facilitating the mobilisation of finance for putting the REDD mechanism into practice.

Also with reference to climate change processes, the programme intervenes in the utmost Northern region of the country by providing advise to several concerned regional ministerial delegations on the elaboration of a modernisation strategy of the wood energy value chain and on the implementation of a master scheme for supplying the urban agglommeration of Maroua with wood energy.